Tuffle

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Romaji

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Average Height

Diet

Sapience Level

Tuffles (ツフル人,Tsufuru-jin) are a highly advanced, technological race of beings native to Planet Plant. However, the planet is later taken over by the Saiyans, leaving the Tuffles extinct in Universe 7. However, their race still exists in Universe 2 until the Tournament of Power.

Contents

Name

Main article: Origins of character names
The Japanese name Tsufuru-jin is a pun. Specifically, it is a Japanese pronunciation of the English word "fruit" (furutsu). This implies their opposition to the Saiyan race, whose name is a pun on the Japanese word for "vegetable" (yasai). The dub name of "Tuffles" possibly linked to "Truffles", another food found in the ground akin to a vegetable. One difference between truffles and other vegetables is that all the names of Saiyans are "plant" vegetables, while truffles are mushrooms, making them fungi and not plants.

History

Universe 7

A Tuffle city (DBZ)

Despite their incredible technologies, the Tuffles are largely a docile race who demonstrated no aggressive tendencies or internal strife. However, the Tuffles co-existed with another race: the Saiyans. Sources concerning how these circumstances arose vary quite drastically. Some sources state the two societies simply evolved alongside one another, while others indicate that the Saiyans are not native to the planet at all. In an interview, the author Akira Toriyama said that Tuffles were indeed the original inhabitants of the planet Vegeta and that they were wiped out by the Saiyans. He also says Tuffles are the original creators of scouters; in addition, there are also dual-eye versions of these devices. The Tuffles originally created scouters to help them guard against enemies and beasts. After the Saiyan-Tuffle War, Gichamu, a highly skilled engineer in Frieza's army, laid his eyes on the scouters and made modifications for concrete battle power numbers and telecommunications abilities. Thus Galactic Frieza Army soldiers began making use of these devices to carry out offensives.

Accounts of the interactions between the two races are also mixed: King Kai's first account explains that the Tuffles lived in the more fertile areas of Planet Plant in vast cities, while the Saiyan tribes dwelled out in the badlands and the two species rarely, if ever, associated with one another. In the OVA Dragon Ball: Plan to Eradicate the Saiyans, King Kai's account says the Saiyans arrived there on a wrecked spaceship and the Tuffles allowed them to settle there; this is accompanied by images of Saiyans shaking hands with Tuffles. However, as the Saiyan race multiplied and increased its numbers, a Saiyan as smart as a Tuffle, later known as King Vegeta, led the Saiyans to attack the Tuffles and take over the planet. What started the war is debatable, Dr. Raichi's account states that the Tuffles welcomed the Saiyans with open arms and treated them as equals. According to Vegeta, however, the Saiyans were treated poorly, essentially like slaves or second class citizens, by the Tuffles and forced to live in harsh badlands of Planet Plant.

Saiyan-Tuffle war

Eventually, regardless of their origins, one Saiyan became dominant amongst the collective tribes; a Saiyan that Dr. Raichi described as having "the cunning of a Tuffle". This Saiyan was none other than Vegeta's father and he incited a swift, brutal war against the Tuffles with the intent of eradicating them entirely in Age 720. The conflict reached a general stalemate since, though they possessed great strength, the Saiyans were vastly outnumbered by the Tuffle populace. The Tuffles were then able to even the odds with their technological prowess. Unfortunately, the war was brought to an end in Age 730 due to the arrival of an event that occurred once every hundred years or eight years (depending on the dub): the full-moon.

Tuffle soldiers combat Saiyans (GT)

The entire Saiyan race transformed into their feral Great Ape forms, and, in the space of a single night, the Tuffles were annihilated. Taking what little of the technology that interested them (notably the Scouters), the Saiyans established their own society amidst the ruins of the Tuffle civilization, crowning King Vegeta and naming the planet after him.

Survivors

Dr. Raichi's spaceship escapes from Planet Plant

Despite essentially being exterminated, traces of the Tuffle race managed to survive the war with the Saiyans. The most notorious being Hatchiyack, a machine designed to amplify the "power of hate" in order to aid the Tuffles defeat the Saiyan menace. Its creator was Dr. Raichi, a brilliant scientist who technically died on the same fateful night as the rest of his race, but was later resurrected as a Ghost Warrior by his own creation. Another infamous Tuffle remnant was Baby, a Tuffle biological experiment. Though Baby himself was not an actual Tuffle, he possessed all their genetic information (notably that of the last Tuffle King) and all their tendencies including their hatred for the Saiyans, making him a DNA archive for the Tuffle race. Baby would go on to infect the entire population of planet Earth with this genetic material, essentially turning everyone on Earth into his Human/Tuffle subjects.

Both of these creatures are successfully destroyed by the collective might of the remaining Saiyans and their descendants, thus eradicating the Tuffle species and rendering them completely extinct.

Tuffleized Super Saiyan

When a parasite Tuffle takes control of a Saiyan, and full converts them into a Tuffle-Saiyan hybrid, they are capable of taking on slightly altered variations of the Saiyan's Super Saiyan forms with white hair instead of the usual gold. The initial one is still simply referred to as "Super Saiyan", despite it's change in appearance.

Strongest Form 1

Baby Vegeta is shown taking on the Tuffle-Saiyan's equivalent of Super Saiyan 2: Strongest Form 1 after being gifted energy from the other part Tuffle Saiyan hybrids: Gohan, Goten, Trunks and Bulla. Baby Trunks is also shown in this form in Dragon Ball Heroes.

Golden Great Ape

Baby Vegeta's Golden Great Ape form, it varies slightly from the regular Saiyan Golden Great Ape form in that the skin is blue and the user retains some of the clothing that they gained in Strongest Form 2. It was on one occasion referred to as "Tuffle Gorilla".

Unlike the other Tuffle-Saiyan forms, this one retains the golden color of a pure Saiyan.

Trivia

The Tuffles appear to have been very similar to Earthlings, in terms of physical appearance, architecture and technological development and use.

While Tuffles are known to exist in Universe 2 and Universe 7, it is unknown if Tuffles exist in Universe 6 or Universe 11. Which is possible as Universe 6 is Universe 7's twin and has several races in common such as Saiyans, Frieza's Race, Earthlings, and Namekians. Meanwhile, Universe 11 is likewise Universe 2's twin.